A blog by Oleg Shilovitsky
Information & Comments about Engineering and Manufacturing Software

PLM, CMMS and BOM Hot Potato

PLM, CMMS and BOM Hot Potato
Oleg
Oleg
8 January, 2014 | 3 min for reading

bom-hot-potato

There is no person in manufacturing universe that can underestimate the importance of right Bill of Material information. However, I can see people responsible for material management in a special league for the context of material management and BOM.

Doug Wallace of Life Cycle Engineering (www.lce.com) speaks exactly about that in his article The importance of an equipment BOM. I found this writeup quite interesting. Here is the passage that defines the importance of BOM:

The main purpose of the materials management organization is to provide the “right parts in the right quantities at the right time.” But where do those material requirements come from? Whether or not demand is predictable, whether the materials are for production or maintenance, the requirements are usually generated from a bill of material (BOM). Without a complete and accurate BOM, decisions regarding material planning and replenishment are often made in a vacuum, resulting in excess inventory, stockouts, expediting charges and expensive downtime.

At the same time, I can see a question here – where is that material requirements and BOM information is coming from? Where is this accurate Bill of Material is located? PLM system is one potential candidate alongside with more traditional MRP/ERP system. I debated this topic last year in my article – Will PLM management enterprise BOM? Shaun Snapp of smfocus has an interesting perspective of separate system taking care of all Bill of Materials management aspects. He debates it on his BOM blog here.

Doug’s article made me think about confusion in the way different systems represents and required data related to Bill of Material management. For example, article provides a detailed information about what information should be on (E)BOM –  Part Number, Description, Quantity, UoM, Manufacturer, MPN, Supplier related information including Supplier’s Part Number.

This information can be managed by PLM/BOM solution as well as PDM solution combined with design system. I’m sure Excel spreadsheet from engineering department can provide it as well. Since the context of discussion is maintenance and CMMS, the information can come from ERP/MRP system. In my view, the confusion comes even in the name – EBOM. Some people can think about (Engineering)BOM, another group can think about (Equipment)BOM as it was presented in the article. I’m sure some computer geeks can think about (Electronic)BOM too :). Article summary provides some hints on the engineering roots for the BOM as well as importance of collaboration beyond silos:

As a rule, the RE is primarily responsible for providing initial EBOM information and all engineering-driven changes. The planner is responsible for ensuring EBOM accuracy. But the key to overall EBOM effectiveness is to recognize that data creation and maintenance is a collaborative process that requires teamwork and communication.

What is my conclusion? In my view, there is a confusion around BOM ownership and responsibilities of providing a correct BOM information. The level of fragmentation of BOM information is too high. Organization is often handle BOM as a “hot potato” changing  hands of different organizations and finally thrown over the manufacturing wall. It introduces a  problem that future lead to higher product product cost, expensive maintenance and operation. Just my thoughts…

Best, Oleg

Recent Posts

Also on BeyondPLM

4 6
25 November, 2019

I’m still digesting tons of information I’ve got last week during AU2019 in Las Vegas. I will continue to share...

19 October, 2018

One of the popular discussions in PLM implementations is Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The debates about PLM TCO intensified...

28 September, 2009

Interesting post few days ago. What is very annoying is the number of buzzwords growing in the enterprise system world....

11 December, 2015

Onshape Inc made a next step in the development of cloud CAD system with the announcement of commercial release and...

26 January, 2025

A long time ago, I came across a simple formula for building enterprise software: find a stakeholder in a company,...

29 February, 2016

Entrepreneurs are taking manufacturing by storm. Recent HBR article –Entrepreneurs Take On Manufacturing by Mark Muro gives you an interesting perspective on...

16 June, 2010

Yesterday, I spent my day on Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. It wasn’t overcrowded, although Expo pass registration that included...

2 February, 2009

During the weekend, I was reading Mid-Market PLM Deployment Challenges by Tom Gill from CPDA. He wrote about multiple issues...

24 April, 2009

I’m getting back to the topic of persistent storage of PLM data. In my previous posts, I touched on this...

Blogroll

To the top